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Australia vs Pakistan 3rd ODI Live Streaming

Monday 25 January 2010 @ 10:22 pm

Australia Vs Pakistan 3rd ODI Live Streaming

3rd ODI: Australia vs Pakistan at Adelaide
Date: Tuesday, January 26, Time: 03:25 GMT, 08:55 IST

Australia Vs Pakistan 3rd ODI Live Streaming :Australia Vs Pakistan 3rd ODI on Tuesday, January 26, Time: 03:25 GMT, 08:55 IST at Adelaide .Australia can wrap up the series with victory in Adelaide after going 2-0 up at the SCG, where they enjoyed their third-greatest winning margin over Pakistan in terms of runs with a 140-run triumph. The visitors will find it difficult to come back in the five-match series but the first step must be to win on Australia Day to ensure the final two games in Perth do not become dead rubbers. To achieve that, they will need a much stronger batting performance than they showed in Sydney, where they were skittled for 127 chasing 268.

Pakistan continue to be haunted by questions over the captaincy. Mohammad Yousuf remains nominally in charge but according to the PCB, won’t be for much longer, and Younis Khan was having some say in bowling changes and field placements at the SCG. Captaincy turmoil is a familiar feature of Pakistan sides and it certainly isn’t helping their on-field performances. As well as lifting their batting game, they must find a way to restrict Australia through the middle overs and if possible dismiss the hosts, who have lost only five and six wickets in each of the first two ODIs.

Watch Australia vs Pakistan 3rd ODI Live Here…

Umar Akmal has the type of game that should be suited to the 50-over format but he has not yet fired in this series. His past four ODI innings read 9, 12, 23 and 0, and he will be searching for a big effort to ease any pressure over his place in the middle order. Adelaide, where the bounce is true and the square boundaries are short, is as good a place as any to turn his form around.
After several years of being a bits-and-pieces player, Cameron White has finally found his role in Australia’s one-day team as a reliable and powerful No. 5. Since the start of the tour of India in October, White has averaged 47.25 in one-day internationals and has passed fifty in five out of eight innings. He started this series with 105 and 55 and on a good batting surface at Adelaide Oval he could easily take the series out of Pakistan’s hands with another brutal display.

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Team news:

Australia are unlikely to make any changes to their winning side unless forced to and the only doubt surrounds Peter Siddle, who reported back soreness following Sunday’s win. The Queensland fast man Ryan Harris has been added to the squad as a shadow player and could add to his sole ODI appearance if Siddle cannot play. “Peter Siddle experienced some back soreness after last night’s ODI in Sydney,” Alex Kountouris, the team physio said. “He’ll be assessed during the course of the day tomorrow when a decision on his availability for the match at Adelaide Oval will be made.”
Australia (probable) 1 Shane Watson, 2 Shaun Marsh, 3 Ricky Ponting (capt), 4 Michael Clarke, 5 Cameron White, 6 Michael Hussey, 7 Brad Haddin (wk), 8 Nathan Hauritz, 9 Clint McKay, 10 Peter Siddle/Ryan Harris, 11 Doug Bollinger.

Pakistan lost Mohammad Asif to a hand injury sustained while fielding in the first ODI at the Gabba and he was replaced in Sydney by Umar Gul. They will be hoping Asif has recovered in time for the third match, while the poor batting in Sydney will have Fawad Alam and Khalid Latif thinking about a possible call-up.

Pakistan (possible) 1 Salman Butt, 2 Kamran Akmal (wk), 3 Younis Khan, 4 Mohammad Yousuf (capt), 5 Umar Akmal, 6 Shoaib Malik, 7 Shahid Afridi, 8 Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, 9 Umar Gul, 10 Mohammed Aamer, 11 Saeed Ajmal.

Pitch and conditions:

Adelaide is renowned as a batsman’s paradise but in the past seven ODIs at the venue the highest team total was 255. And in five of the past six there the team batting first has lost the match. It’s the sort of ground where batting doesn’t get any harder as the day wears on and the team that bats first won’t be confident with anything less than 260. The weather should be fine with a high temperature of 33C.

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Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/cricket-articles/australia-vs-pakistan-3rd-odi-live-streaming-1781952.html




survival of test cricket?

Monday 25 January 2010 @ 8:08 am

The last two Tests of the most recent Ashes series showed why the one-day game can never be Test cricket. In Melbourne, the action rose and fell dramatically over five days. The English team were noble triers, undermanned and undermined by their country’s own stultifying system, led by an immigrant’s son who had fallen quickly and hard from his exalted position. The story was powerfully subtended by the question of Waugh’s survival. The forces were ranged against our hero. He scored a flashing 77 to put his selection, seemingly, beyond doubt. But then, on the final day, he was forced to bat again to avert catastrophe for himself and his team. He failed, in a short and controversial innings. This dramatic last moment of suspense raised more questions. The English bowlers looked to have their tails up, as though they’d had a moment of revelation. But after the pure theatre of that near-catastrophe, Waugh’s team won the match. Ultimately, it set the scene for the bitter-sweet Sydney game.

At the end of each day, the developments of a day’s Test cricket are the topic of conversation in lounge rooms and pubs around the country. These twists and turns in the plot just don’t happen in one-day cricket, or any other sport, for that matter. It’s like comparing a rollicking novel with a clever slogan. Yes, it’s unique to former colonies, and an object of ridicule to Americans who know of it, but let America have instant gratification in all things. To seek their approval is another way of cringing.

Test cricket has something limited-overs cricket needs: a variety of finishing scenarios. Crowds don’t necessarily go to limited-overs games to see batsmen who might otherwise fail at Test level slap bowlers all over the ground. They go to see exciting contests and speculate about the way they might end.

Perhaps the best way to ensure the one-day game reflects Test cricket, and vice versa, is for the ICC to experiment with a two-innings-a-side format. Martin Crowe had the right idea with Cricket Max, invented back in the late ‘90s. It introduced the spectator to the principles of Test cricket by mimicking the two-innings-a-team format (ten 8-ball overs), but retained the compressed form of one-day cricket. It’s easy to elaborate the two-innings concept for international consumption. The one-day game’s current predictability can be rectified.

But innovations can only be judged by their intent, and the ICC and home boards should take heed. Commercially motivated interests who see youth as little more than a hormone-driven, thrill-seeking market won’t introduce anything for the betterment of the game. Their intention will be, simply, to “capture the youth market.” The equation of youth with low standards and short attention spans is an introduction of the law of diminishing fleas. If the logic is followed to its furthest degree, one day no-one will have the aptitude or the attitude to play Test cricket. What youth actually need –and what cricket needs to give them – are heroes who achieve spectacularly at both forms of the game.

Realistically, it’s only in the last ten years that the World Cup has become cricket’s greatest prize – here, in fact, in 1992, when the organisers, in a pentecostal flash, realised its potential as a cash bonanza. The two main reasons for the success of international limited-overs cricket – nationalism and slick marketing – have little to do with its intrinsic charm. The longer version, meanwhile, continues to try to resurrect its image around the world. It hasn’t been marketed all that well since the days of World Series Cricket. Test cricket needs to become a game for the masses, and quality doesn’t just announce itself to them. Only marketing and education achieve that. And, in 2003, being tradition-bound just for the sake of it won’t wash with anyone.

When the first limited-overs match was played under a roof (Australia vs South Africa) in 2000, the move was hailed “the way forward” by Steve Waugh. But traditionalists argued that the vagaries of the weather and pitch conditions make cricket the great game it is. Both parties were right. Although Test matches should be played in bright sunshine, a roof and lights do nothing except add another of those variables, without the dreary thought of no play, due to rain. This development is some way off, due to the lack of stadiums with roofs, especially roofs that open and close at short notice. But if the ICC and home boards have the interests of the game and cricket-watching public in mind, they’ll consider any valid innovation.

In 1998, the then President of the ICC, Jagmoham Dalmiya, noticing that interest in Test matches was taking a fade, devised a format for a World Championship of Test Cricket, with a scale of points for outright wins, first-innings wins and draws, and bonus points for scoring rates. No matter what else we thought of him, at least Dalmiya pretended for a moment that the dead hand of politics, the complexities of international scheduling, and delicate diplomatic issues were no barrier to innovation.

But the “championship” has become a chimera. At the conclusion of a tedious, inexcusably-long five-year cycle, the average fan gets to look at a table, its outcomes determined by dodgy mathematics, hearing nothing meanwhile until a sudden, illogical announcement that, say, South Africa is the new number one. And who’s second – Malawi? Who cares? What the public obviously want is a competition – one with real significance, like the one-day World Cup. Or a series of them, the scheduling of which is determined by Test match performance, so the significance of a Test transcends its present series, and everyone who goes along to a Test is aware of it.

If the ICC is serious about moving into the twenty-first century, it will eventually live up to its promise to grant Test status to new countries and give them international experience. However, space cannot be created for them unless established teams, especially Australia, England and the West Indies, concede that three-Test series’ are the way of the future, and the international schedule is culled of redundant one-dayers.

At the moment, the “championship” focuses on series, rather than individual Tests. A 1-0 result is no different to a 3-2 result. Furthermore, a South African victory over Bangladesh is worth the same as an Ashes win. Although we’d certainly want this to be the case in future, it’s a travesty now. The Proteas are patently paperweights compared to the Australians, and Michael Vaughan will be wizened and bald by the time Bangladesh is ready to topple England.

One way to eliminate such absurdities is to have a World Championship structured in two tiers so that developing nations get to play each other, with the odd match outside of their group to give them experience against high-quality teams. The inclusion of nations like Holland, Canada and Kenya will demand such a graduated approach. The third match of every series should be enlivened by being worth bonus championship points, ensuring there are no “dead” rubbers. No Test should ever again occur in a vacuum.

Test cricket’s recent resurgence, due mainly to the sparkling efforts of Aussie teams under Taylor, Waugh and now Ponting, is heartening, but not sustainable. TV ratings are up in Australia. Crowds are up in Australia. But what happens when the current crop retire? Gilchrist, McGrath, Ponting, Hayden, Gillespie, Warne – they all have charisma. But aggressive cricket is only an attitude, and attitude is a changeable thing. Only when it’s built into the game; encouraged and systematised with penalties, rewards and structures, will it continue beyond the present era.

Another ingredient in the resuscitation of Test cricket has been the reconstruction of spin bowling by two of its greatest-ever practitioners, Warne and Muralitharan. No longer is it considered an ancient, moribund art. Even the most rabid adrenaline junkie would feel robbed if their only opportunity to see these guys at work was within the strictures of a limited over match. But they, too, will soon retire. What then? The quality of any game is as good as the quality of the deeds of those who play it. Test cricket must embrace quality, not retreat from it, because only Test matches can fully display the virtues that define cricket.

If the survival of cricket is now highly dependent on revenue raised from the World Cup, cricket is at the brink. The Test match must be instated as the meat of the game, or at least enjoy an equal share of power with international limited-overs cricket. But it requires imagination, diplomacy and commitment from the ICC and home boards around the world; new ways of thinking, and the right reasons.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/cricket-articles/survival-of-test-cricket-1771275.html




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